Bingo! Gaming halls a community gathering place

On any given weeknight, close to a hundred folks gather at the American Veterans of Foreign Wars building on Eighth Street to play bingo. A quiet excitement builds as the caller reads numbers from ping pong-size balls that roll out in front of him.Players pay $10 for a small book of paper bingo squa...

By STEPHEN KLOOSTERMAN

Holland Sentinel

By STEPHEN KLOOSTERMAN

Posted Mar. 15, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 15, 2010 at 3:09 PM

By STEPHEN KLOOSTERMAN

Posted Mar. 15, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Mar 15, 2010 at 3:09 PM

Holland, MI

On any given weeknight, close to a hundred folks gather at the American Veterans of Foreign Wars building on Eighth Street to play bingo. A quiet excitement builds as the caller reads numbers from ping pong-size balls that roll out in front of him.

Players pay $10 for a small book of paper bingo squares, which they daub with colorful ink whenever one of the numbers on the page is called. For $15, they can get a book with two extra bingo squares per page.

“People are superstitious, I guess,” said Robert Gordon, bingo chairman and club manager for the VFW. “Some of them have pictures of their grandkids, pictures of their dogs. Some of them have a certain chair where they have to sit, because that’s where they always sit, and that’s where they got lucky.”

Payouts are never large, the biggest most days topping out at about $300 or $500. Progressive prizes, though, increase until someone wins and can total in the thousands.

“Believe me, when you’re sitting there waiting for a couple numbers, the adrenaline is pumping if you’re talking about a jackpot of a couple thousand bucks,” Gordon said. “I think when the economy gets worse, more people turn out. It’s a chance to earn some money.”

“And we get all ages. I somebody here tonight I had to card, because they looked young,” said Shirley Sybesman, 80, who has been running the games at the VFW for at least 30 years.

“We get all races — Asian, Hispanic, black,” Gordon said.

While bingo has become a national pastime over the last few decades — and alive and well in small-town America — it is a tradition in decline. The number of bingo licenses distributed by the Michigan charitable gaming office dipped to 1,496 in 2009, well below 2,060, the number of licenses the state distributed when it started regulating bingo halls in 1973. And the number of halls open today is less than half the number that were open as recently as 1994.

Bingo halls in Michigan are bracing for another setback in May 1, when smoking will be banned from public places.

The decline of popularity in bingo is a loss of potential income for non-profit institutions around the state.

Cash bingo games licensed by the state for charities raised $17.4 million in revenue in 2009.

The Holland VFW recently decided to direct proceeds of the bingo games — tens of thousands of dollars a year — to local, rather than national charities.who are they giving it to?

“We decided to quit doing that, and bring it down to the local level,” said VFW Commander Rey Avendano. “The way the economy is going, we feel it’s better to give back to the community.”